replied angrily, “What the devil did she study so hard for? I’m sure I never urged her; she would have been immeasurably superior to any one else, if she had taken it easy and husbanded her own strength.” He tried Miss Watkins, and Joan of Arc ceased to please; the house emptied, the speculation failed, and the manager set off for a professional tour in the provinces, resolving never again to establish an English company. But he left behind him his hitherto faithful Crowe, who hung on Smith from the time that he found the musician pretty constant in his attentions to Mrs. Neville: for Smith could not utterly abandon the woman he had admired so warmly—that respect he had felt for her, as she repulsed his suit, by the sight of her sleeping children, continued still, for the virtues which had called it forth were not dimmed like the brightness of her intellect. What if she did lose the thread of a long conversation, and break forth like a bird into snatches of exquisite melody—she was always the same simple, modest lady, the same tender, loving mother; and though poor Joan of Arc had ended her victories when Maude Percy ceased to represent her, the composer could not forget the delight of that one night of exultation, nor the gentle rebuke which had followed the triumph.
So he often sought out the poor lady and consulted with the old servant on means of supporting her. It ended in his procuring pupils for her, and though they were not a first-rate connection, it proved a living for her children; and the genius who had once stood unrivalled, now uncomplainingly taught the “Sol-fa” to the flaunting daughters of the butcher who supplied her with meat, or cancelled the baker’s bill by teaching his boy who had a “wonderful notion of singing.” The high-minded woman saw no degradation there, as she had before seen no disgrace in her public position. What cared she, so that her children were honestly provided for? In the blaze of her triumph, as in the dim twilight, her children were all her care—her forsaken children who depended on her alone! Even in her bitterest trial, the wrong done to them had been the keenest pang the mother had suffered, far more than the wife. One other friend she had; the clergyman of her parish was one of those hard-working men who do wonders with the most limited time and the scantiest purse, and no sooner did he hear of her illness than he found a hundred kindnesses in his power; his was not the religion of the Pharisee, who sees sin in all that differs from his own views, and it never occurred to him, who had never set foot within a playhouse, to reproach the woman who had ventured on the stage for the support of her fatherless family. Had she been a nun in a convent, he would not have deemed her purer.
One morning as Hugo Rossini Smith was rehearsing one of those wonderful gymnastic exercises with which he was wont to charm an enlightened public, Crowe entered the room and stationed himself patiently behind the music-stool, till the maestro having worked himself up to fever-heat turned round and beheld an unwonted look of animation on his usually depressed physiognomy.
“O, sir! I have made such a discovery!”
“Concerning what?”
“Well, sir, I have been talking to Master Neville, and I let out to him that I was sure his mother was a lady born. You know Mr. Rossi always said so, too.”
“Pshaw! That was only his humbug. He wanted to make her more mysterious; he never meant it.”
“Well, sir, if he did not, I do. I have seen ladies in plenty in my better days, and have been caressed and praised by them. She is a lady out-and-out, and I knew it the first time I opened the door to her, for all that her dress was so shabby. Well, I told this to the boy, and he coloured up in a proud sort of way. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you are right, but say nothing about it; mamma never will allow us to mention it; her father is Sir John Beauchamp, and he has a beautiful house in London, and one handsomer still in Yorkshire; but mamma says she disobeyed him by marrying, and he has never forgiven her.’ Now, sir, don’t you think if this baronet knew how hard up she has been, through such an illness, he must help his own daughter?”
“If you knew the aristocracy as I do,” replied Smith, with a grand air, “you would be aware that there is no must in the case.”
“Well, sir, but don’t you think one might try? You, for instance, might go and tell them all about her. The boy was sure his mother had had no intercourse with her family for years, so they can’t know what she has suffered.”
The great composer stroked his moustache thoughtfully. After some meditation, he took up a large red book from the table: “Well, Crowe, this will give us the address. Here we have it, Sir John Beauchamp, 4, Hampton Place. You know it leads into Eaton Square; call up your scattered wits and endeavour to obtain, quietly, some information regarding the habits of the family—if there is Lady B., children and so on; if they are musical, intellectual, fashionable, charitable, or what? If you can sound the key-note for me to-night, I will play the overture to-morrow.” The youth was departing forthwith. “Stay, Crowe, I declare you look quite radiant; what is it that fascinates you so entirely in poor Mrs. Neville, and thus rouses all your faculties?”
The boy coloured.
“Well, I don’t know; she is so unlike the other women I have had to do with; so kind and yet so above me; and then her voice is so lovely!”
Poor Crowe, that voice of hers was his reward for everything! Smith felt much the same towards her, but in a less degree; he was too much taken up with himself to be capable of genuine enthusiasm.
The musician and his secretary did not meet again till the former returned from the musical soirée where he had been acting the lion greatly to his own satisfaction, as usual. Crowe followed him at once to his room:
“I have not learnt much, they are very shut-up people it seems; could hear nothing about Sir John, but there is a Lady Beauchamp much younger than the baronet, and no children. I can’t hear that they do anything but go to chapel, or see anybody.”
“They shall see me to-morrow!” returned